Creswick-Smeaton RSL searches for WWI digger's descendants after medals dug up in Victorian backyard

Neville Holmes admits he almost threw away the buried treasure he found in his backyard in central-west Victoria before realizing it was WWI medals.

“At first I thought they were just coins, encased in dirt and junk like that and I put them aside,” Mr Holmes told 9NEWS.

He later spoke to his local RSL club who discovered the medals belonged to WWI digger Private George Bailey of the 39^th Battalion.

Private Bailey was 36 when he joined the army and 37 when he was killed at Messines in Belgium in a gas attack.

He was unmarried so his medals were given to his brother Fred, who lived in the Creswick home where Mr Holmes unearthed them almost a century later.

The reason they were buried remains unknown.

The medals will be restored with the hope they can be reunited with Private Bailey’s descendants before Anzac Day.